Alarm engineering aiding system

ABSTRACT

The present invention relates to an alarm engineering aiding system for aiding engineering of an alarm generated in a plant. There are provided an alarm generating scenario file in which types of pseudo alarms and generation timings are defined, a plant instrumentation information DB for storing instrumentation information of the plant, and a pseudo alarm generating section for generating the pseudo alarm based on the alarm generating scenario file, and adding instrumentation information of the plant while referring to the plant instrumentation information DB when the pseudo alarm is generated.

This application claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No.2007-188463, filed Jul. 19, 2007, in the Japanese Patent Office. TheJapanese Patent Application No. 2007-188463 is incorporated by referencein its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to an alarm engineering aiding system foraiding the engineering applied to check whether or not process/displayof the alarm generated in the plant are made correctly, and the like.

RELATED ART

In the related art, when a large number of alarms are generatedsuccessively from the field equipments, the distributed control system(DCS), and the like, an alarm flood state that an alarm messagemonitoring screen is filled with alarm messages takes place. This alarmflood state becomes a cause of such a situation that the plant operatorpasses over an important alarm or makes an error of judgment.

Therefore, such an alarm management is applied that, even though anumber of unnecessary alarms are generated, the operator is allowed toaccept or reject the information and is informed of the necessary alarmonly at an optimum timing. At this time, the engineering applied toprocess, display, etc. of the alarm is needed. For this purpose, whenthe engineering of the alarm is conducted, a means for checking whetheror not the alarm engineering is carried out truly to give the intendedresult of this engineering is needed.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory view of an alarm engineering in the relatedart.

The DCS is constructed by a field control station (FCS) 1 forcontrolling the field equipment (not shown), an operation monitoringstation (HIS) 10 for providing an operation interface to execute theoperation monitoring of the FCS, and an engineering station (ENG) 20 forexecuting engineering functions such as application editing, download,test, etc. and doing maintenance. The function of the HIS 10 and thefunction of the ENG 20 may be installed into one PC or separate PCs.

An alarm message collecting section 11 receives the alarm or the eventfrom the actual machines such as the field equipment, the FCS 1, and thelike in the plant. An alarm processing section 12 applies addition ofadded value information, normalization, suppression, grouping, etc. tothe received alarm or event. Here, the “addition of added valueinformation” is a function of adding the supposed cause from which thealarm originated, the treatment to be taken, the information to bemonitored together, etc. to the alarm or event. Also, the“normalization” is a process of removing the dialect or the irregularityof level from the collected alarms or events and is a function ofexecuting the standardization of the notation methods, the leveling of adegree of importance of alarm, etc.

Also, the “suppression” is a function of deleting the alarms, of whichthe operator should not be informed, such as the alarm generated fromthe plant whose operation is halted, the follow-up alarm, etc. from themonitored objects. Also, the “grouping” is a function of deletingoverlapping alarms, of which the operator should not be informed, whenthe same alarm is generated at the same time from plural systems.

An alarm displaying section 13 is a means for displaying the alarm orthe event on a display 14 as a displaying section in such a format thatthe operator can deal easily with the alarm or the event, and executesfiltering, shelving, load limit, etc. Here, the “filtering” is afunction of filtering the messages while using identifiers attachedoriginally to the alarm message (user name, plant hierarchical name,alarm type, alarm importance, etc.) and identifiers newly added(monitoring purpose of alarm, use of alarm, running mode to bemonitored, etc.) as a key.

Also, the “shelving” is a function of retracting temporarily the alarms,which do not need monitoring on a priority basis, into another messagedisplay area prepared in advance such that the number of alarm messagesto be displayed in a main message display area is reduced visually andthus the important alarm can be picked up easily without fail. Also, the“load limit” is a function of reducing the number of alarm messages tobe displayed by applying automatically the previously designatedfiltering to lighten an operator's monitoring load when the alarmmessage occurs frequently.

The plant engineer sets the process on the alarm or event and specifiesa display mode by using an alarm engineering section 23 via an inputtingsection 21. The data being set by the alarm engineering section 23 aresaved in an alarm engineering DB 24 as a database (DB). The plantengineer checks the contents on a display 22 and carries out theengineering of the plant. For example, priority of the alarm, purpose ofthe alarm, importance, allowable time until a countermeasure is taken,etc. are saved in the alarm engineering DB 24.

The process made by the alarm processing section 12 and the display madeby the alarm displaying section 13 are carried out while referring tothe information in the alarm engineering DB 24.

[Patent Literature 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No.2006-318147

Up to now, a check of the alarm engineering was made by generatingactually the alarm by using the actual machines or building up thespecialized application used to generate a pseudo message in the FCS.For this reason, in order to generate the intended alarm, a lot ofman-hours are required and also the expert knowledge is needed.

Also, there is no guarantee that all intended alarms could always begenerated. Therefore, the plant engineer cannot check whether or not allalarm engineering are being conducted correctly.

SUMMARY

Exemplary embodiments of the present invention provide an alarmengineering aiding system that can to carry out an alarm test to checkwhether or not process/display of the alarm are made correctly, bygenerating a pseudo alarm.

Exemplary embodiments of the present invention is constructed asfollows.

(1) An alarm engineering aiding system for aiding engineering of analarm generated in a plant, includes an alarm generating scenario filein which types of pseudo alarms and generation timings are defined; aplant instrumentation information DB for storing instrumentationinformation of the plant; and a pseudo alarm generating section forgenerating the pseudo alarm based on the alarm generating scenario file,and adding instrumentation information of the plant while referring tothe plant instrumentation information DB when the pseudo alarm isgenerated.

(2) The alarm engineering aiding system set forth in (1) furtherincludes an alarm engineering section for setting process of the alarmgenerated in the plant and contents to be displayed; an alarmengineering DB for storing data being set by the alarm engineeringsection; and an alarm managing section for managing the alarm generatedin the plant, while referring to the alarm engineering DB; wherein thepseudo alarm of the pseudo alarm generating section is added to thealarm managing section.

(3) In the alarm engineering aiding system set forth in (2), the alarmmanaging section has an alarm processing section for executing theprocess of the alarm, and diagnoses whether or not the process appliedto the alarm is carried out correctly, based on a result of the pseudoalarm processed by the alarm processing section.

(4) In the alarm engineering aiding system set forth in (2) or (3), thealarm managing section has an alarm displaying section for controlling adisplay of the alarm, and diagnoses whether or not the display of thealarm is controlled correctly, based on a display result of the pseudoalarm on the alarm displaying section.

(5) In the alarm engineering aiding system set forth in to any one of(1) to (4), the pseudo alarm generating section is constructed to chooseand execute the process in the alarm generating scenario file step bystep.

(6) In the alarm engineering aiding system set forth in to any one of(1) to (5), the pseudo alarm generating section is constructed to hold aplurality of alarm generating scenario files and choose the file to beused from a plurality of alarm generating scenario files.

(7) In the alarm engineering aiding system set forth in to any one of(1) to (6), the plant instrumentation information DB extractsinstrumentation information of the plant from an actual machineenvironment.

According to the present invention, following advantages can be given.

Since an alarm test environment for generating an alarm in a pseudofashion is provided, it can be checked whether or not the alarmengineering is being carried out correctly.

Other features and advantages may be apparent from the followingdetailed description, the accompanying drawings and the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a configurative view showing an embodiment of the presentinvention.

FIG. 2 is a view showing a display example of an alarm generatingscenario file of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a view showing a concrete example of a pseudo alarm generatingsection of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory view of an alarm engineering in the relatedart.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present invention will be explained in detail with reference to thedrawings hereinafter.

FIG. 1 is a configurative view showing an embodiment of the presentinvention. The same reference symbols are affixed to the sameconstituent elements in the foregoing figure. Hereinafter, it will beexplained how an alarm test to check whether or not the engineeringapplied to process/display an alarm is being handled correctly iscarried out.

An alarm generating scenario file 31 is a file that defines what pseudoalarm for use in test should be generated at what timing. This file isprepared before the alarm test is carried out in advance. Also, aplurality of files can be provided in response to the test contents inunit of file.

A plant instrumentation information DB 32 stores instrumentationinformation of the plant. Here, the “instrumentation information of theplant” are information about tags of functional blocks that performactually the PID control in the FCS, information indicating by whichhardware the plant is constructed, and the like.

The instrumentation information of the plant may be set by the manualinput, or may be captured from other DB. Also, the instrumentationinformation of the plant may be extracted from an actual machineenvironment.

A pseudo alarm generating section 33 generates the pseudo alarm based onthe alarm generating scenario file 31, and adds the instrumentationinformation of the plant by referring to the plant instrumentationinformation DB 32 when the pseudo alarm is generated.

Also, the pseudo alarm generating section 33 generates the pseudo alarmbased on the alarm generating scenario file 31, and injects the pseudoalarm into an alarm managing section 34. For example, “Generate aprocess alarm HH of FIC100” is described in the alarm generatingscenario file 31, and information about “a degree of importance of theHH alarm of FIC100”, “which location of which FCS the FIC100 islocated”, etc., which are the data necessary for the alarm test, aredescribed in the plant instrumentation information DB 32. The pseudoalarm generating section 33 generates the pseudo alarm by correlatingthe alarm generating scenario file 31 with the information in the plantinstrumentation information DB 32.

The alarm managing section 34 consists of an alarm processing section 34a for executing the process of the alarm, and an alarm displayingsection 34 b for controlling the display of the alarm. The alarmmanaging section 34 performs management of the alarm while referring tothe information in the alarm engineering DB 24.

Here, the alarm managing section 34 is provided in the alarm testenvironment in a pseudo fashion, and is a function corresponding to theactual alarm managing section (the alarm processing section 12 and thealarm displaying section 13 in FIG. 1).

The alarm processing section 34 a is a function equivalent to the alarmprocessing section 12 in FIG. 1 except that this alarm processingsection operates even in the alarm test environment. This alarmprocessing section 34 a applies addition of added value information,normalization, suppression, grouping, etc. to the received alarm orevent.

The alarm displaying section 34 b is a function equivalent to the alarmdisplaying section 13 in FIG. 1 except that this alarm displayingsection operates even in the alarm test environment. This alarmdisplaying section 34 b is a means for displaying the alarm or the eventon a display 22 as a displaying section in such a format that theoperator can deal easily with the alarm or the event, and executesfiltering, shelving, load limit, etc.

In this manner, when the pseudo alarm is injected into the alarmmanaging section 34 on the alarm test environment to check theprocess/display results yielded by the pseudo alarm, a diagnosis tocheck whether or not process/display are made correctly in response tothe pseudo alarm can be conducted.

FIG. 2 shows a display example of an alarm generating scenario file ofthe present invention.

In this alarm generating scenario file, such an example is illustratedthat one process alarm is generated, then three types of process alarmsare generated after 2000 msec have passed, and then four types ofprocess alarms are generated five times repeatedly every 300 msec.

FIG. 3 is a view showing a concrete example of the pseudo alarmgenerating section of the present invention. FIG. 3 shows a pseudo alarmgenerating tool as a concrete example of the pseudo alarm generatingsection 33 in FIG. 1.

The pseudo alarm generating tool can handle a plurality of alarmgenerating scenario files. File names of respective scenario files andcomments corresponding to these files are displayed in the left window.When the plant operator chooses the scenario file name to be used from aplurality of scenario files by using a mouse, or the like, the contentsof the chosen scenario file are displayed in the right window.

The process of the alarm generating scenario file can be executedautomatically in a full range in accordance with the described contents,or can be executed step by step. In this case, when the contents of thescenario file is chosen by using a mouse, or the like, the process givenon the chosen row is carried out. The plant engineer can execute thecontrol to generate the pseudo alarm, stop temporarily the pseudo alarm,or the like by using this pseudo alarm generating tool.

In this manner, the information are managed separately in the alarmgenerating scenario file and the plant instrumentation information, andthe pseudo alarm is generated by synthesizing these information.Therefore, a wide variety of alarms can be produced. The validity of thealarm engineering can be checked, or the configuration check can beexecuted without omission.

Also, when the alarm is generated actually, the operator must take anycountermeasure against such alarm. Therefore, the operator can undergothe training in the alarm generation by generating the pseudo alarm.

While the invention has been described with respect to a limited numberof embodiments, those skilled in the art, having benefit of thisdisclosure, will appreciate that other embodiments can be devised whichdo not depart from the scope of the invention as disclosed herein.Accordingly, the scope of the invention should be limited only by theattached claims.

1. An alarm engineering aiding system for aiding engineering of an alarmgenerated in a plant, comprising: an alarm generating scenario file inwhich types of pseudo alarms and generation timings are defined; a plantinstrumentation information DB for storing instrumentation informationof the plant; and a pseudo alarm generating section for generating thepseudo alarm based on the alarm generating scenario file, and addinginstrumentation information of the plant while referring to the plantinstrumentation information DB when the pseudo alarm is generated.
 2. Analarm engineering aiding system, according to claim 1, furthercomprising: an alarm engineering section for setting process of thealarm generated in the plant and contents to be displayed; an alarmengineering DB for storing data being set by the alarm engineeringsection; and an alarm managing section for managing the alarm generatedin the plant, while referring to the alarm engineering DB; wherein thepseudo alarm of the pseudo alarm generating section is added to thealarm managing section.
 3. An alarm engineering aiding system, accordingto claim 2, wherein the alarm managing section has an alarm processingsection for executing the process of the alarm, and diagnoses whether ornot the process applied to the alarm is carried out correctly, based ona result of the pseudo alarm processed by the alarm processing section.4. An alarm engineering aiding system, according to claim 2, wherein thealarm managing section has an alarm displaying section for controlling adisplay of the alarm, and diagnoses whether or not the display of thealarm is controlled correctly, based on a display result of the pseudoalarm on the alarm displaying section.
 5. An alarm engineering aidingsystem, according to claim 1, wherein the pseudo alarm generatingsection is constructed to choose and execute the process in the alarmgenerating scenario file step by step.
 6. An alarm engineering aidingsystem, according to claim 1, wherein the pseudo alarm generatingsection is constructed to hold a plurality of alarm generating scenariofiles and choose the file to be used from a plurality of alarmgenerating scenario files.
 7. An alarm engineering aiding system,according to claim 1, wherein the plant instrumentation information DBextracts instrumentation information of the plant from an actual machineenvironment.